Read The Damnation Affair Online
Authors: Lilith Saintcrow
The Damnation Affair (12 page)
“Don’t you worry about that now. For right now, go on up and tell Li Ang that nobody’s going to take her baby.” With that, he backed up, reaching for the door. “
Bar
this door, ma’am. As soon as I’m gone.”
“Nobody is going to take her—”
What a curious thing to say to a woman abed.
But he swung the door closed, and Cat lost no time in dropping the bar into its brackets. The kitchen door was barred as well—had Li Ang done so?
Another long groan from overhead, spiraling up into a hoarse cry.
Oh, God.
Cat’s palms were slippery with sweat, and the wrapper stuck to her most unbecomingly. Her heart pounded so hard she was half-afraid she would collapse.
The girl was up there alone, and in pain. Cat bit her lip, working the pump handle to fill the huge black kettle. She set it on the stove, stammered a boiling-charm—it took her two tries to remember an applicable one from Miss Bowdler’s first book—and ran for the hall.
She halted, staring at the exact spot where Jack Gabriel had stood. He hadn’t looked surprised or ruffled in the least. Come to think of it, he hadn’t looked ruffled since she’d met him. Su
ch phlegm might be maddening, but it was also strangely consoling. If he said he was going to bring help, then help he would bring, and as soon as possible too.
Cat climbed the stairs on trembling legs. Clammy and damp—she should find more appropriate attire before Mr. Gabriel returned.
Li Ang’s next groan spiraled into a scream, and Cat put aside the shaking…and ran.
M
a Ripp was a mean-faced hag with hard claws and a widow’s sour black weeds. But inside the birthing room she was efficient and strangely gentle. She took one look at the schoolmarm’s preparations and barked, “Good enough. Sheriff, more water. You there, girl, set her higher on them pillows.” One yellow-nailed finger jabbed at the marm, whose big dark eyes and pale cheeks threatened to turn Gabe inside out.
The poor girl looked scared to death. Li v of td tAng was propped on pillows on what had to be the marm’s bed, her knees up and her hair sticking to her cheeks in jet-black streaks. Miss Barrowe had folded the comforter under her knees, and there was another divot on the bed—where, no doubt, Miss Barrowe had sat, holding Li Ang’s hand as the birthing pangs ripped through the Chinoise girl.
“What’s your mancy?” Ma Ripp finished, checking Li Ang’s fragile wrist for her pulse.
Li Ang moaned, cursing in Chinoisie, and Miss Barrowe flinched. But her answer came, clear as a bell. “My Practicality? It’s in Light, ma’am.”
Ripp nodded once, her iron-gray hair braided tightly and looped about her large head. “Well, not entirely useless. Can you charm ice?”
To her credit, the marm didn’t quail further. “Yes, of course.”
Ripp handed her a small, battered tin cup. “Dip some water, there, and charm little bits of ice. Enough for her to suck on. Sheriff, get
moving
. This is woman’s business.”
Gabe retreated, but not before he caught Miss Barrowe’s gaze. She stared at him for a long bright moment, and his insides knotted up again. Her cheeks were incredibly pale, and every time Li Ang sobbed for breath, she flinched in sympathy. Her hair was pulled back into a simple braid, still dripping, and she had managed to insert herself into a dress, though the buttons were askew and she had pulled the damp wrapper back on over it.
I’m here
, he wanted to say.
Don’t you worry.
She averted her gaze, hurriedly, and dipped the tin cup in a basin of water. Mancy sparked, and Gabe found himself in the hall, his breathing hitching oddly.
The doors were locked, and Li Ang was as safe as he could make her. That was the bargain, and he intended to see it through. He should warn the marm about this, though. There were dangers hanging around the Chinoise girl that would only get deeper once she birthed.
He just hadn’t thought it would come so
soon
.
More water was set to boil with numb fingers; he had to try twice to get the right charm to settle into the kettle. The marm was using a powerful but volatile mancy, and it almost singed
him
, too.
He wasn’t surprised.
Footsteps overhead. He closed his eyes and
listened
. At least his early training still held, and his ears were plenty sharp.
“Are you
quite
sure?” The marm, anxious.
“Walkin’s best at this stage.” Ripp, a good deal gentler. “That’s it, girl. Good, good.”
“Her legs.” Miss Barrowe gasped. “And did you see…Ma’am—”
“Shh. We’ve enough to do now.”
Of course she would notice the scars on Li Ang’s legs. There were more on the Chinoise girl’s back—welt and rope and burn, a crazyquilt of suffering, barbaric lines of ink forced under bleeding skin too. Gabe breathed out, slowly, through his open mouth. They wouldn’t come into this part of Damnation after her. Not comfortably, at least—the Chinois stayed on their own side, and once the railroad got close enough they’d camp out to provide labor for its iron stitchery.
If word got out the baby was born, though…
Gabe, this is a hell of a tangle.
Li Ang couldn’t explain much of where she’d come from, but he’d done some quiet digging. At least, as quiet as he could, being a tall-ass roundeye wandering around in the Chinois part of Damnation. He supposed he should be grateful the marm hadn’t taken it into her head to explore
that
shadow-half of town. They had their own chartermage, too, a disgusting piece of dried leather with a white beard and clawlike nails.
Who just happened to be Li Ang’s husband. Or, to b {andhite be precise, Li Ang was one of his wives. The only one to bear him a child to term, if what he’d heard was right.
Gabe was thinking the Chinois didn’t hold with divorce.
Ripp kept talking, soothing and low. Li Ang cried out again, but softly, like a bird. Maybe it helped to have other womenfolk with her.
Whereas
he
was useless. He should be out riding the circuit, too. But Russ could handle it on his lonesome this once.
Jack stared at the black kettle and kept his hand away from his gun. It looked to be a long night.
* * *
“Push!” Ma Ripp barked.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” the marm snapped. “She’s Chinoise; she can’t understand you!”
Jack tried to make himself as small as possible against the hall wall. Inside the bedroom, Li Ang’s cries had taken on a despairing note. It was almost touching, to hear Miss Barrowe taking up Ma Ripp on Li Ang’s behalf.
“Instead of shouting at her—
ow!
”
“That’s it!” Ripp crooned. “Squeeze her hands! Almost there, duckums. I can see the head.”
“Oh dear…” Suddenly the marm seemed not quite so crisp. “Is that supposed to happen?”
Li Ang’s voice spiraled up into a scream, and she cursed both of them roundly. At least, so it sounded. The harsh, foreign syllables broke, agony and triumph mingling, and Gabe flinched.
“Oh…” Miss Barrowe. “Oh, my God.”
“That’s it! That’s a good girl! Now! Now!”
Li Ang screamed again. A wet tearing sound, a gushing. Slapping, and Ma Ripp’s muttered mancy. Popping, cracking, fizzing—and Miss Barrowe, softly now.
“Hush, dearie…oh, hush, all’s well, yes, hold my hand…Oh, my. My goodness. My heavens.”
She doesn’t know what to say. I reckon I wouldn’t, either.
Then, a thin protesting wail, gathering in force. “A boy,” Ma Ripp announced dryly. “Breathin’ now, thank the Almighty. And just as fine as can be. Missy, turn loose of her and wash this little ’un.”
“I’ve never—”
“That don’t matter. Hold his head,
so
. Just sponge him—that’s right. Wrap him up good, I laid the swaddling right there. You had a doll once, dintcha? Just like a doll.”
Li Ang cursed again, raggedly. Or at least, it sounded like a foul imprecation, with an edge of beseeching.
“Oh, yes, I’m bringing him. Just a moment.” Miss Barrowe, half to weeping. “He’s so
small
. Oh my goodness.
Oh
—he’s leaking, I do believe he’s…oh, good
Lord
.” There was a spray and a pattering, and the baby howled with indignation.
“Healthy little cuss,” Ma Ripp observed. “Use the fresh swaddlin’, there. Sometimes they pee. Now comes another bit of a mess. Bleeding, too. Ho, Sheriff! Needing another pair of hands!”
What, me?
But he was already palming the door open.
A squalling little bundle, wrapped tightly but inexpertly in boiled and charm-dry cloth, screwed up its tiny little face and wailed. Li Ang, wan and sagging, her knees hitched high and everything below the waist exposed, closed her eyes and clutched the bundle to her chest. It looked like a little old man, and was quickly turning purple. It produced an
amazing
amount of noise.
“Get the tit in that babe’s mouth.” Ma Ripp pointed at Miss Barrowe, who was braced at the side of the bed, a smear of blood on her colorless cheek. The Boston miss looked dazed. “Sheriff, my bag. Got to stanch this with mair’s root and a charm.”
The bed looked sadly the worse for wear, bright blood and a clot of darkness spreading from Li Ang’s undersides.
That’s an awful lot of blood for such a little girl.
“I believe, ah, that she wishes you to feed the baby, Miss Ang.” The marm’s fingers, clutched in Li Ang’s free hand, must have been throbbing, but she merely looked pale and interested. “I, ah, think it might be best to…oh,
dear
.”
“Don’t you go fainting like a useless little prip.” Ma Ripp accepted her capacious black Gladstone. “Or I’ll step on you. Get her to put the tit in that little one’s mouth; best thing for them both.” Rummaging in the bag now, with bloodstained fingers, the woman looked like a graveyard hag. “And
you
, Sheriff. More cloths. Won’t fix itself, and I know
you’ve
seen the underbits of a woman before.”
“Will she be…” His head was full of rushing noise. Damn, who would have thought the little bitty Chinoise girl would have so much blood in her? Grown men couldn’t stand after losing that much.
“Right as rain once we fix this. Seen worse, yes I have.” Ma Ripp nodded, pushing back a lank strand of sweat-drenched gray hair knocked free of her braids. “Right fine work done tonight.”
“That’s it, dear. Oh, he knows what to do!” Miss Barrowe actually sounded delighted. Maybe women all loved this birthing business.
“This child yourn?” Ripp’s claws were quick and deft, a charm guttering into life on the pad of fresh cloth she pressed between Li Ang’s legs. “You seem mighty interested.”
“She’s a widow.” Jack managed the familiar lie, and followed it with truth. “And it ain’t mine.”
“Well, her husband, God rest the heathen, has a fine son. At least he’ll never have to do
this
.” She licked her dry, withered lips. “Don’t suppose there’s no whiskey in this house.”
“Madam!” The marm, genuinely shocked, blinked from Li Ang’s side. The Chinoise girl had let go of Miss Barrowe’s hand, and was occupied with her new bundle, staring at the tiny little purple-faced thing as if she had never seen a baby before. For all Jack knew, she hadn’t. She was awful young, and the Chinois…well. It didn’t bear thinking about.
“Keep your corset on, missy. A drop’s just the thing after this type of work.” The midwife accepted Gabe’s flask and tossed back a healthy slug. “Now, let’s get this mess cleared. Dawn’s coming. You should ride for the chartermage, to fetch him a charing.”
“Quite.” Miss Barrowe no longer sounded so pale, and the baby had quit its hollering. It was occupied with its mother’s breast, in any case, and the sight gave Gabe an odd feeling in the region of his stomach.
She looks just like any of our girls.
And, compelled, he glanced at Miss Barrowe. Some color had come back into her face, and she stared at the baby, rapt as Li Ang herself. The smear of blood on Miss Barrowe’s soft cheek was wrong, and his fingers tingled. He could just wipe it away, couldn’
t he.
If he could touch her.
Don’t, Jack. You know what could happen. You know what’s bound to happen if you start getting ideas.
“Sheriff.” A poke to his shoulder, Ma Ripp shoving the metal flask back at him. “You go fetch the mage, now. Sooner this ’un gets a proper charing, the better.”
“Yes ma’am,” he mumbled, and backed for the door.
T
uesday was a blur of h ~p ke filepos=0alf-somnolent anxiety. There were items to be procured for a baby’s care, and the midwife’s fee to pay, and the news to be spread that her girl had birthed and the school was closed for the day. The Chinoise was only a servant, true, and this event should not cause her to leave her duties.
But Cat had been dead on her feet, and Jack Gabriel had, none too gently, told her to take her rest while he made sure the town knew.
She had no idea if it was quite proper or normal for Mr. Gabriel to take charge of affairs, but was grateful nonetheless. Mrs. Ripp, her terrible yellowed teeth showing in a grin, undertook to provide the things the baby would need—for a fee, of course, and Cat had paid without question. Afterward, Mr. Gabriel had words with the crone, and returned a third of Cat’s money.
It was…thought-provoking.
It ain’t mine
, he’d said, but it was most odd, that he would take such care over a Chinoise girl’s baby. It was none of Cat’s concern, though, and there was plenty else to worry about on that day.
There was engaging a charmwasher for the laundry, the short coffee-colored chartermage to pay and the certificate for a fresh charing-charm to fill, a delivery of firewood to be attended to, and Cat had not eaten until Jack Gabriel had shoved a plate into her hands and told her to sit down and take a bite. Tolerable biscuits, some half-charred bacon, and there was even boiling water for tea.
She had boiled so much water she doubted she would ever forget the charm itself. It was burned into her fingers, along with its catchword. She wondered if it was the way a Continental sorcerer might feel about a certain charm or mancy, never mind that their sorcery worked differently. Mancy followed geography, as the old saying went.
She’d fallen asleep at the kitchen table, staring at the side of her teacup, and only woke when the sheriff shook her shoulder and told her briskly to get herself up to bed. It was Li Ang’s pallet she slept on through the remainder of that long, terribly hot day, and so deeply she had surfaced in a panic, unable to discern who, where, or even
what
she was.
Fortunately, the feeling had passed, and she found herself in Damnation, with a baby’s cry coming from downstairs and Li Ang singing to her son in an exhausted, crooning voice. The poor girl had been trying to clean the kitchen, and Cat’s heart had wrung itself in a most peculiar fashion.
It had taken all Cat’s skill to gently but firmly bully the Chinoise girl upstairs and tuck her in with the baby.
This cannot be so hard.
And indeed the biscuits were lumpy and her gruel left a little to be desired, but it was nourishing. Or so she hoped, but then dawn was painting the hills with orange and pink, and she had to hurry to reach the schoolhouse at a reasonable hour.
Without
her parasol, no less.
Her mother would be not just annoyed, but angered. A lady did not forget such things, much less a Barrowe-Browne.
She had half-expected the schoolroom to be empty on Wednesday, Mrs. Granger having had more than enough time to spread calumny and gossip-brimstone. But the students came trooping in, some of them downcast, true, but others bright and cheery—or sullenly energetic—as usual. Now she knew their names, and a curious calm settled over her.
The children did not seem so fractious, now. Even the Dalrymple girls were no trouble, bent over their slates and newly eager to please. Amy, the elder, even elbowed Cecily once or twice when the younger girl seemed likely to bridle, and Cat rewarded the elder girl with letting her touch the pianoforte’s keys during lunchtime. “There are such things as lessons,” she had intimated, and the naked hope on the young blonde hoyden’s face gave Cat another strange, piercing pain in the region of her rere ar chest.
Instead of savages, the children now looked oddly hopeful. Their bare feet and ragged clothing were less urchin than primitive, as if the Garden of Shoaal had been re-created here in the far West, amid the dust and the heat and the incivility. Even the freckles on young Cecily’s face had their own fey beauty, tiny spots of gold on fair young skin.
It was there, sitting at her desk and staring across the bent heads as they scratched at their slates, that she realized just how far she was from Boston. Perhaps it was lack of sleep bringing a clarity all its own.
Cat drew in a deep breath, her stays digging in briefly, and wondered if she could march into a pawnshop under broad daylight.
No, night is best. But more dangerous—if you are seen, somehow…
But this was not Boston. She shook her head and attended to the third form, laboriously reciting from the eighth page of Miss Bowdler’s First Primer. “Very good,” she encouraged, though she would have said so if they had been reciting backward charter-cantations, or even the Magna Disputa. “You may lay that aside, and apply yourself to tracing your alphabet.”
“Yes mum,” they chorused, and she surprised herself by smiling.
* * *